Students organize health program

Friday

Jan 22, 2010 at 12:01 AM

By Jamon SmithStaff Writer

Students at Collins-Riverside Middle School are organizing a program to improve the health of residents in Northport and the surrounding communities.The school received a grant from the University of Alabama to start the Community Health Applications through Mentoring Program. The program will allow Collins-Riverside students to provide workshops and health fairs in Northport and Tuscaloosa County that will educate people about the health issues that affect them most.“The University of Alabama received the CHAMP grant and they awarded it out to sub-grantees, which we were one of,” said Ginger Martz, an eighth-grade science teacher at Collins-Riverside. “The grant is about promoting learning service practices that allow students to use what they learn in the classroom in community service.” Martz said the biggest health issues in the area include diabetes and hypertension. “Our students felt that we could help the community with a health fair to show people how to change their lifestyles to be healthier,” she said. “We also realized that many of our community members don’t have health insurance, so we want to show them how to be healthy without it costing them anything.”With more than 50 percent of the students at Collins-Riverside participating in the free and reduced lunch program, students at the school know personally what it’s like to lack the money to pay for health care.But if people are taught preventative health measures — such as healthy eating, daily teeth brushing and exercising — that can save money on medical bills. The health fair is planned for the end of April, Martz said, and will feature workshops, health screenings and other services that teachers and students are working on. The school’s portion of the grant —­ $20,000 ­— will be used to pay for the health fair, create health-care brochures that the students will make and pay for a mobile research laboratory.“The mobile lab will include laptop computers with Internet access that can be moved from one classroom to another to allow our students to benefit from them during this program,” Martz said. “They’ll be loaded with programs to help our students create the brochures and research medical issues facing our community.” Besides helping the community with their health issues, the work that the students are doing through CHAMP will help them with their school work in general, Martz said.“Our teachers wanted to do this as well as the students because the service learning program increases retention of the content material that we’re teaching in the classroom,” Martz said. “This will give them practical application of science, math and technology.”

Reach Jamon Smith at jamon.smith@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0204.

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